Chapter 62 The Ghost Moving the Corpse (Bonus Chapter at 18,000 words) The ghost watching the show...

After Zhou Fangdong collected the rewards for unlocking the new tenant profile, he intended to lie down and rest for a while, but unexpectedly, shortly after lying down, the air purification device in the corridor suddenly popped up an alarm—

Another body has appeared on the first floor.

When he arrived at the location where the body had appeared, Quan Wuming had already swallowed half of it, seemingly intending to put it inside his body before throwing it into the garbage dump.

"Did you see what kind of ghost carried the corpse here?"

Upon hearing Zhou Fangdong's question, Quan Wuming shook his head blankly, "I have never encountered that ghost. When I arrived, there was only a living corpse wandering around on the first floor."

They dumped the body and ran away... How strange, what's wrong with this ghost in the back building of the apartment building? Why does it have to dump the body in the front building?

Zhou Fangdong then asked, "Since you've never actually encountered that ghost, how are you so sure it was the ghost controlling the corpse to come to the front building, rather than the corpse acting on its own?"

“I can sense a special ghostly aura on this corpse. This corpse is definitely being controlled by a ghost, and it didn’t wake up on its own.”

Seeing this, he stopped asking questions and ordered, "From now on, if you see any corpses running from the back building, don't put them in the garbage dump. Tie their hands and feet and lock them in the mahjong room in the apartment's activity room."

Zhou Fangdong planned to collect several more corpses and then move them all to the basement to be used as lamp oil workers.

Upon hearing this strange request, Quan Wuming did not question it at all and obediently agreed. After swallowing the corpse completely, he walked towards the activity room.

Watching Quan Wuming walk away, Zhou Fangdong walked directly into the narrow elevator doors.

He decided not to go back to his room before dark, but to stay in front of the tunnel between the front and back buildings of the apartment building and see when the ghost would throw the corpse over again.

...Speaking of which, the only passage from the back building to the front building should be this narrow tunnel next to the elevator, right?

That should be correct, after all, when I first encountered the zombie Taoist priest, he was guarding the end of this narrow tunnel.

This Taoist priest spent his life killing ghosts between the front and back buildings, and after his death, he was probably guarding the only passage between the front and back buildings.

With this in mind, Zhou Fangdong felt relieved and walked to the end of the tunnel to wait for his prey.

The [landlord's clothes] he's wearing has a special effect called [Hidden in the Dark]. When he remains still for more than three minutes, he will blend into the darkness, and neither humans nor ghosts can find him.

About half an hour later, just as Zhou Fangdong was idly counting how many bricks were on the abandoned fountain in the garden, he suddenly caught a glimpse of a figure moving across the way.

Zhou Fangdong did not move, staring expressionlessly at the direction where the figure had appeared.

Standing in his position, although the view is not very clear due to the various flower beds and fountains in the middle, you can still vaguely see the main gate of the back building.

A corpse, just like the one before, with a dried-out face and covered in blood as if it had just died, appeared at the main entrance of the back building.

However, the corpse is not the main point; the main point is the shadow riding on its neck—a hunched, dark figure resembling a gaunt old man, riding on the corpse's neck.

Without the slightest hesitation, Zhou Fangdong used [Dead Zone Invasion] directly on the dark figure and the corpse.

A dark red crack appeared out of nowhere in the apartment garden, like a scarlet demon's eye suddenly opening in the void.

It was noon, but the sky suddenly darkened.

An ominous aura enveloped the open space between the front and back buildings of the apartment complex. The restless, churning black mist, like ink dripping into clear water, emerged from the crack and spread rapidly at a visible speed.

The black mist transformed into hands, frantically grabbing at everything in its path: abandoned flowerbeds, fountains, broken tiles and soil on the ground, the corpse that had just stepped out of the apartment building's back entrance, and the dark shadow above the corpse's head.

From the tunnel exit of the front building to the entrance of the back building of the apartment, a tunnel also appeared in the garden open space between the two buildings... a trench that looked like it was dug by countless pairs of hands.

Zhou Fangdong never expected that this skill would have this effect.

...It felt like a laser cannon was fired, as if I had accidentally wandered into a Gundam movie set.

No wonder the system wouldn't let him use it in the apartment. The side effects of using this skill aren't just causing the yin energy to stir up, are they?

Zhou Fangdong uncertainly opened the skill description for [Dead Zone Invasion] and glanced at it again.

That's right, it is indeed opening a rift to banish ghosts and monsters to the dead.

Is this what you call exile? They've been blasted to smithereens...

Fortunately, the newly repaired trash was located at the iron railing on the far side of the garden and was not affected by the skill.

Forget it, as long as we deal with this ghost, it doesn't matter if there are more ditches in the garden. The place is already so dilapidated, it doesn't matter if it gets any more run-down.

Although the rifts that caused the Dead Zone invasion have disappeared, the sky over the garden area remains dark and gloomy.

Zhou Fangdong did not linger there and returned to the first floor through the tunnel.

He had just stepped out of the tunnel when he received a call from Miao Zheng.

He learned from Miao Zheng that the girl who gave Miao Zheng the talisman tainted with the aura of an evil god might be being targeted by the Heirs of the Bone Society.

After hearing Miao Zheng mention the strange dream the girl had, Zhou Fangdong realized that she was one of the four reserve players who had been pulled into Yin Yang Town by the main god.

It seems the Heirs of the Bone Society has already captured two of the boys.

Upon hearing this, Zhou Fangdong's expression instantly turned serious.

It is currently uncertain whether the Legacy Society can trace the apartment based on these four individuals.

The apartment is currently under development and has so many ordinary tenants. If those cultists choose to ignore everything and fight him to the death, Zhou Fangdong really can't beat these lunatics... He has worked so hard to develop the apartment to this point, and he cares about too many things.

...The issue of the Bone Inheritance Society must be resolved as soon as possible.

Zhou Fangdong asked Miao Zheng to relay a message to Hong Zhong, requesting that their supervisory bureau protect the remaining two girls.

After hanging up the phone, Zhou Fangdong began to look through the Evil God Disguise System.

He planned to fake an oracle, protecting the remaining two girls while diverting the attention of the Bone Inheritance Society to someone else.

Who should take the blame for this...?

The Supreme God.

I don't know if the Heirs of the Bone are aware of the existence of the Supreme God. I need to find a way to hint at it in the oracle.

Even if modifying the oracle costs 1,000 ghost coins, the money still has to be spent. The situation is critical now; this isn't the time to be stingy with ghost coins.

Zhou Fangdong opened the evil god disguise interface and looked through the blue dots that had not been responded to by the evil god.

Unfortunately, none of these rituals were related to the core of the evil god's clone, so he could only randomly choose one from the points of light that were relatively close to the city.

According to Zhou Fangdong's idea, those points of light hidden in the city should be relatively core strongholds.

Because the city center is always under close patrol and monitoring by the Bureau of Supervision, setting up a base in the city center would not only be inconvenient for activities, but the cost of hiding a base in the city center would definitely be much higher than in the suburbs.

Even so, they still maintain these outposts in the city, so these locations must have some important function.

After revising the oracle, let's also tell the Bureau of Surveillance the locations of these points of light. They'll correspond to the locations given last time, which should help us catch more cultists... Even if we don't catch them, disrupting their setup and rituals is still good.

Although Zhou Fangdong cannot respond to the rituals that have already been answered by the evil gods—those red dots on the map—he can still view the contents of those rituals.

Clicking on those red dots will generate a short pixel animation, in which you can view the oracles left by evil gods or the process of cultists praying for blessings.

After watching some short animations, Zhou Fangdong chose the light spot for the blessing ceremony that was least likely to go wrong.

These blessing rituals usually leave no divine message, and sometimes, even after the evil god takes the offerings, the blessing is not given. Cultists have become accustomed to this, believing the ritual's failure is due to insufficient offerings.

One cannot say too much about divine pronouncements, for the more one says, the more mistakes one will make. It is best to just leave it as the words "the supreme deity".

The offerings for this blessing ceremony were several corpses, so Zhou Fangdong only modified the divine oracle and did not touch these things.

After doing all this, Zhou Fangdong stayed in the apartment entrance until dark, and during that time, he did not see any more bodies.

The corpse and shadow he just blasted apart with [Dead Zone Invasion] might really be the one who started moving the corpse to the front building.

Zhou Fangdong returned to his room with peace of mind. After it got completely dark, he picked up the giant blade and used Mu Yuechan's body to teleport to the Ghost Market using the substitution function.

The ghost market remained as eerie as ever, day and night.

Zhou Fangdong walked to the butcher shop with practiced ease. Before he even entered, the unusually burly butcher shop owner came out to greet him.

His heavy footsteps landed on the ground, and the earth seemed to tremble with each step.

"I never expected you would actually bring me back the meat Ganoderma seeds." The butcher's deep voice rose considerably.

Zhou Fangdong said, "Let's go inside and talk. I have some fragments of Ganoderma lucidum for you."

The butcher quickly ushered him inside.

When Zhou Fangdong took the meat Ganoderma fragments he had collected from the second floor out of his inventory, the butcher's breathing quickened.

After a long silence, the butcher said in a deep voice, "Young man, although you look flashy, you're a really honest person and you do things properly. I won't cheat you. These meat spirit fungus fragments plus the seeds, I'll give you a thousand ghost coins."

After saying that, he took out a small cloth bag and handed it to Zhou Fangdong.

Zhou Fangdong accepted the bag without hesitation. As soon as he held it, a wisp of yin energy emanated from it and seeped into his body.

[Congratulations, host, you have received 1,000 Ghost Coins]

After leaving the butcher shop, Zhou Fangdong intended to visit the silversmith shop next door, but he didn't expect to run into a group of people as soon as he stepped out of the shop.

Before Zhou Fangdong could even get a clear look at the group of people, an overwhelming surge of anger suddenly welled up inside him.

The raging anger seemed to materialize, like red-hot needles constantly piercing through his limbs and bones... Zhou Fangdong felt his body trembling uncontrollably.

Overwhelming hatred and murderous intent made him feel dizzy. Under the influence of this extreme emotion, Zhou Fangdong almost couldn't control the urge to plunge his hand into the chest of the person opposite him, tear open his flesh, take out his heart, and use his gushing blood to extinguish the boundless rage that was almost burning his soul.

"Yuechan, it's been a long time," said the handsome, bald man leading the group.

Although his voice was gentle, his tone was extremely sarcastic.

"I never expected that after so many years, you would become so ugly. It's almost unbearable to look at you."

Zhou Fangdong had already guessed who the person in front of him was from the emotions emanating from Mu Yuechan's body.

Add to that their signature baldness...

The members of the Bone Inheritance Society.

The leader was still the same cult leader who had skinned Mu Yuechan alive.

They must all be high-ranking or core members, because they all wear human skin hats embroidered with runes.

There seems to be some kind of restriction in the Ghost Market; even a ghost as powerful as Mu Yuechan cannot fully release its resentment.

But driven by hatred, his body didn't intend to simply obliterate these cultists with resentment; it only wanted to use the most basic and primitive means to tear this person apart.

As the cultists took out purple talismans, trying to set up some kind of formation, Zhou Fangdong directly raised the giant blade in his hand.

Because this large sword could not be stored in the inventory, Zhou Fangdong always carried the sword when using Mu Yuechan's body to enter the Ghost Market.

When he wanted to kill the cultists, he instinctively used a knife.

Unexpectedly, the knife that Zhou Fangdong himself needed to recharge with ghost coins to use actually started moving directly in Mu Yuechan's hands, without costing her any money or effort.

The blade was instantly stained red, and the giant blade, dragging chains, moved like a flowing sleeve, slicing off the heads of three cultists with a wave of his hand.

Under Zhou Fangdong's deliberate control, the blade avoided the bald man in the lead.

He wanted to take this person back to the apartment and leave it to Mu Yuechan to handle personally.

A fight was about to break out on the street, while the shops on both sides of the street were all watching the drama unfold.

Faced with such blatant violation of the rules of the ghost market, not a single shop owner stepped forward to stop it.

At the entrance of the coffin shop, a dark, faceless figure appeared, speaking in a hoarse, weathered voice that sounded like someone sawing wood: "Aren't you going to do anything about it?"

The tall, elderly woman from the funeral shop next door also came to the door and casually replied, "This old woman is old and her eyesight is poor, so I didn't see... It's just a pity about those human skins. The little kid was too rough, using such strong ghost energy to drive the blade. With the heads severed, the clothes made from them won't be sturdy, so I won't buy skins like that."

The shop owners across the street all came out and whispered among themselves at their doorways.

"The Sigu Society must be crazy. These people used to cause all sorts of trouble in the apartment when it was in chaos. Now that the apartment has been restored and the seal has been lifted, they still dare to run into it. They must be tired of living."

"They can't even beat a ghost from the apartment, yet they want to cause trouble for the apartment."

"Should we ban members of the Bone Inheritance Society from entering the Ghost Market?"

“A direct ban would be too obvious. Although we prefer apartments, we can’t be too blatant. If we break the rules of the Ghost Market, no customers will dare to come in the future.”

"Let's pretend we didn't see it. It's getting dark, and I should go to sleep."

"Has the Ghost Market ever seen daylight...?"

The handsome bald man never expected that Mu Yuechan would become even more ruthless than before.

These core members, wearing human skin hats that could grant immunity to attacks from vengeful spirits, were like infants still being weaned in front of Mu Yuechan. Before they could even use their cursed artifacts, they were all decapitated in an instant.

The bald man looked at the headless corpses around him and collapsed to the ground.

Although the blade did not slice across his neck, the flying chains continued to strike his face, eventually wrapping around his neck.

The hook at the end was caught on his collarbone, the chain at the front was held in Zhou Fangdong's hand, and the giant blade was pointed at his heart.

The bald man had lost his initial arrogance. He knelt in a pool of blood, tears streaming down his bruised and swollen face.

He looked like a snotty bug crawling out of a mud puddle, his face streaked with snot and tears, as he pleaded in a low, humble voice:

"Yuechan...for the sake of our past, please let me go. I truly loved you..."

His spine seemed to have been removed; he kept pleading, his whole body limp, like a lump of mud covered in human skin.

"Oh right, I have four thousand ghost coins here... If you're willing to let me go... I know it's not enough to make up for all the suffering you've endured over the years, but I can... I can be with you again. After all this, let's live a good life together, okay?"

Zhou Fangdong put away the cloth bag in his hand without saying a word or showing any expression.

[Congratulations, host, you have received 4,000 Ghost Coins]

Even after accepting the ghost money, Zhou Fangdong still showed no intention of letting him go, and the chains binding him tightened even more.

Zhou Fangdong mentally called out to the system: "System, can I teleport back to my apartment with a living creature?"

At this point, he had no desire to linger in the ghost market any longer; he just wanted to get back to his apartment as soon as possible.

[Yes, but before teleporting, the host needs to wrap every part of the living creature's body with the ghost tenant's yin energy; otherwise, there is a risk of it falling during teleportation.]

Zhou Fangdong nodded.

The crimson resentment emanating from the white-clad actor gradually coiled around the bald man, whose expression grew increasingly desperate. In the end, the two vanished together in the ghost market.

In the brief silence of the ghost market, it was the owner of the funeral shop who came out first to help clean up the decapitated corpses on the stone road.

Several small paper figures holding mops and rags flew out of the paper shop and joined the funeral shop owner in cleaning up the bloodstains on the ground.

The ghost market quickly returned to its former cleanliness.

After bringing the bald man to room 103, Zhou Fangdong teleported back to his own room.

Not long after, a system pop-up window appeared:

[The ghost tenant, Mu Yuechan, a leading actress from the Republican era, has reached 100% favorability.]

[Please claim your favorability reward in time.]

Zhou Fangdong was not in the mood to collect it at the moment.

He frowned, opened the public area beautification interface, and looked at the floor plan of the first-floor corridor.

In the floor plan of the beautifully decorated pixelated apartment at night, many corpses lie scattered haphazardly on the floor.

He was in a hurry to return to the apartment for two reasons. First, he wanted to prevent any unforeseen complications and bring the bald man back to Mu Yuechan as soon as possible. Second, the apartment's air purification system kept giving him warnings when he was unilaterally slaughtering those cultists.

...More corpses invaded the front building from the back building.

However, because a murderous Taoist priest was lurking in the apartment corridor at night, the corpses were almost all chopped into pieces as soon as they appeared.

But unlike during the day, the frequency of these corpses appearing at night was like a zombie apocalypse. If it weren't for the Taoist priest, Zhou Fangdong suspected that these things would have taken over the entire first-floor corridor.

Didn't he already use [Dead Zone Invasion] to eliminate the ghost that was controlling the corpses?

Why are ghosts carrying corpses from the back building to the front building again at night?